ThinkFree Announces Beta Release of ThinkFree Office Online

BOSTON -- In addition to our earlier report at iPodObserver about ThinkFree Office 3 Show, iPod Edition, ThinkFree also announced the beta release of a new online product dubbed ThinkFree Office Online. TJ Kang, CEO of ThinkFree, took a few moments to demonstrate the new service to The Mac Observer.

Thanks to the magic of Java, ThinkFree Office Online offers the same easy-to-use software as the ThinkFree Office 3 suite. Unlike other ThinkFree products, the basic service will be free, and will rely on keyword driven advertising, as well as charging for services beyond the basic offering. In addition to allowing users to create, access and edit any Word, Excel or PowerPoint file, the Online service offers some interesting additional goodies.

The first is 30 MB of upgradable online storage, so you have somewhere to put your documents. The next feature is blog embedding, so you can create a mini version of the ThinkFree Java software within your blog, which makes it possible to things such as sharing Office documents without requiring users to download a special viewer.

The last feature is an instant PDF feature where one can take any Word, Excel or PowerPoint document and change it into a secure, unchangeable PDF file.